"Oh, how precious is time... Oh, that God would make me more fruitful."-David Brainerd, Missionary to Indians

Born in Haddam, Connecticut, APRIL 20, 1718, his parents died while he was a young teenager.

He attempted farming, but on July 12, 1739, he had an experience with God of 'unspeakable glory' that gave him a "hearty desire to exalt Him, to set Him on the throne and to 'seek first His Kingdom.'"

This was colonial Indian missionary,
David Brainerd.

A Connecticut law forbade the appointment of ministers unless they graduated from Harvard, Yale or a European institution, so in 1740,
David Brainerd began attending Yale.

He soon began to show symptoms of tuberculosis.

When Great Awakening preachers George Whitefield, Gilbert Tennent, Ebenezer Pemberton and James Davenport began spreading spiritual enthusiasm, tension emerged at Yale between faculty and students.

In 1741, Yale trustees decreed that 'if any student of this College shall...say, that the Rector...Trustees or tutors are hypocrites, carnal or unconverted men, he shall for the first offense make a public confession in the hall, and for the second offense be expelled.'

Accused of having said his tutor, Chauncey Whittelsey, 'has no more grace than a chair,'
David Brainerd was expelled.

In 1742,
David Brainerd was licensed to preach by evangelicals known as "New Lights."

He was supported by the "Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge" to do missionary work among Native Americans.

In 1749, Jonathan Edwards published
"An Account of the Life of the Late Reverend Mr. David Brainerd," which inspired millions, including William Carey, Adoniram Judson, Oswald J. Smith, and John Wesley, who wrote:

"What can be done to revive the work of God where it is decayed? Let every preacher read carefully over the life of
David Brainerd."

David Brainerd's life played a role in establishing the colleges of Princeton and Dartmouth.

Yale's Divinity School named a building
"Brainerd Hall," the only building named after a student who had been expelled.

David Brainerd wrote:

"Oh, how precious is time, and how it pains me to see it slide away, while I do so little to any good purpose. Oh, that God would make me more fruitful."